Yesterday, I shared the first music video for Lordi’s Would You Love A Monsterman? Today’s music video of the day is the second video for Would You Love A Monsterman?
This second video takes the plot of the first video and replaces the little girl in the woods with a young woman in a morgue. There’s no doll in this video but there is twice as much killing. Again, the video ends with the main character deciding that yes, she can love a monsterman.
There are actually two music videos of Lordi’s Would You Love A Monsterman, one that was released in 2002 and another one from 2006. This is the 2002 video.
This version features a young girl playing with a dirty doll in the woods when Lordi suddenly appears and invites her to join them. They even set her doll on fire but she still decides to join. That is the power of Lordi.
Lordi is a Finnish band, who have been making music since 1992. An earlier version of Would You Love A Monsterman was recorded under the title I Would Do It All For You in 1993. When I Would Do It All For You was turned into Would You Love a Monsterman in 2002, it became Lordi’s first big hit.
Four years after this video was released, Lordi would make history as both the only Finnish and the only “hard rock” act to win the Eurovision song contest with their song, Hard Rock Hallelujah.
To quote Alice Cooper himself:
“This is my tip-of-the-hat to early Rolling Stones. Like in 1964/65 when their songs were very Chuck Berry orientated. They just feel so good, in the pocket. This song was begging to be in the live show. We’ve done it in four different continents now and no one had ever heard it. By the second chorus, the whole audience is singing ‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off.’ It’s the perfect little 3 minute hit single.”
I’ll Bite Your Face Off was the first single to be released off Welcome 2 My Nightmare, Alice Cooper’s 26th studio album and a follow-up to Cooper’s 1975 album, Welcome To My Nightmare. Each song represents a different aspect of a bad dream. In I’ll Bite Your Face Off, Alice dreams about being introduced to the devil.
The video was filmed at several different live venues. One of these performances was at the 100 Club in London, where actor Johnny Depp joined the band on guitar.
From the minute that I read Lisa Marie’s review of The Island two weeks ago, I knew that I wanted to highlight this video from Madness.
As you can tell from the title, the song is a tribute to Michael Caine and his status as a British cultural icon. The video is based on The IPCRESS File, the best known of the five films in which Caine played Harry Palmer. Harry was the working class equivalent of James Bond. Bond was a glamorous bachelor who slept with beautiful women and traveled the world. Harry, on the other hand, lived alone in a shabby flat, wore glasses, and never got paid what he deserved.
That actually is Michael Caine repeating his name for the song’s hook. When the band first approached him, Caine turned them down because he had never heard of them. Only after his daughter told him how popular Madness was did Caine change his mind. The sample of Caine repeating his own name was meant as a tribute to a scene in The IPCRESS File, in which Harry Palmer resisted a brainwashing attempt by repeating his own name.
Michael Caine spent 8 weeks on the British charts, peaking at number 11.
A man drives through the desert in a Thunderbird. A hawk perches in a church. An unknown couple dance the tango. The beach awaits. Yes, this is the video for Mr. Mister’s Broken Wings.
The video was directed by Oley Sassone, who later directed episodes of Hercules and Xena.. According to Sassone, “The subtext of the story and what I wanted the audience to feel was our hero’s own backstory in his mind. The tango dancers, juxtaposed with the images of him getting lost while driving, tossing a map and instead following the hawk overhead was, symbolically, his own soul, his own voice deep inside telling him to carry on – to lead him to a new path, a new beginning.” Personally, I have always thought this song was about someone struggling to recover from a bad breakup.
Broken Wings is a song that epitomizes the mid-1980s so it’s not surprising that it’s also included on the Vice City: Grand Theft Auto soundtrack. Getting chased the a police helicopter while listening to Mr. Mister is a surreal experience.
Contrary to popular belief, Smuggler’s Blues was not inspired by Miami Vice. Instead, the exact opposite was true.
As Glenn Frey explained in the book, Behind The Hits, he based the song on some of the dealers and smugglers that he met while both a member of the Eagles and during his solo career. “You don’t spend 15 years in rock and roll without coming in contact with entrepreneurs. I’ve wanted to write a song about drug smuggling for a long time, but I’m glad I waited for this one. It says everything I wanted to say on the subject. I’m proud of the lyrics – it’s good journalism.”
The song appeared on Frey’s second solo album and was heard by Miami Vice‘s executive producer, Michael Mann. Mann requested that one of the show’s writers, Miguel Pinero, adapt the song into an episode. That episode, which was named after the song, premiered on February 1st, 1985. The song was played throughout the episode and some of the lyrics were even included in the dialogue. Glenn Frey himself appeared as a pilot. As a result, the episode not only helped to make Smuggler’s Blues a hit but it also launched Frey’s acting career as well.
The video, which was cinematic at a time when many bands were still releasing simple performance clips, was directed by Duncan Gibbins. Gibbins went on to direct a handful of thrillers before his tragic death in 1993. Gibbins was staying in Southern California when a wildfire engulfed the house that he was renting. Gibbins narrowly managed to escape from the house but then saw that a cat had been trapped inside. He went back in and, while he did rescue the cat, he suffered severe burns at a result. Gibbins jumped into house’s swimming pool. not realizing that the burns would allow the chlorine to enter his bloodstream. Gibbins died later that day at Sherman Oaks Hospital, still asking if the cat had survived. (Other than a few minor burns, the cat was unharmed.)
Gibbins work on Smuggler’s Blues is impressive and still influential. The video was honored as “Best Concept Video” at the 1985 MTV Music Video Awards.
Duncan Gibbins, the director of Smuggler’s Blues
Crockett’s Theme was originally written for the hit NBC series, Miami Vice. As evidenced by the title, it was the theme music for everyone’s favorite cop without socks, Sonny Crockett. The song was released on both the second Miami Vice soundtrack and Jan Hammer’s 1987 album, Escape From Television.
The video has nothing to do with Miami Vice. Instead, it is about a man who cannot choose between his woman and his kaleidoscope. The woman eventually makes the decision for him, not only breaking his kaleidoscope but leaving him. Luckily, Jan Hammer is in the next room, playing a keytar.
Crockett’s Theme was not a hit in the United States but found greater success in Europe. It reached number two in Ireland. More recently, it can be heard on Emotion 98.3 in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which was itself heavily influenced by Miami Vice.
Tearing up Vice City while rocking out to Jan Hammer
There are many houses featured in the music video for Madness’s Our House. While the song is about the day-to-day life of the British working class, the video still offers up glimpses of the Playboy Mansion and Buckingham Palace. However, most of the video was filmed at a terrace house in northwest London.
This song is often mistakenly referred to as being a one-hit wonder. While it may be the band’s best-known and most popular song in the United States, it’s just one of the many hits that Madness had in the UK. First formed in 1976 and still together (though they did temporarily break-up for 6 years, from 1986 to 1992), Madness has had 15 singles reach the UK top ten, one UK number one single, and two numbers ones in Ireland. Over the course of the 80s, Madness spent a record 214 weeks on the UK singles charts.
This video was directed by David Robinson, who directed several other videos for Madness. He also directed videos for Robert Plant, The Belle Stars, Robert Palmer, and Tracey Ullman.
The song may be about a drunk race car driver named Jerry and a retired fireman named Captain Pearson but the video is exhibit one of why nachos shouldn’t be left on the sidewalk.
Jerry Was A Race Car Driver was the second single to be release by Primus and it was their first song to receive heavy radio airplay. It eventually peaked at number 23 on 1991’s Modern Rock Tracks. Listen closely and you can hear a sample of Bill Moseley saying, “Dog will hunt!” in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
As for the video, the man buying the nachos is played by Adam Gates while the skateboarder who collides with him is Primus’s guitarist, Larry LaLonde. The performance footage was filmed at a Primus show at Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, California while the race car footage was filmed at the Petaluma speedway. As for the claymation figures in the nachos, they are all creatures who appeared on the cover of Primus’s Sailing the Seas of Cheese album.
First released in 1989, the album Dr. Feelgood became and remains Mötley Crüe’s best-selling album to date. It was also their most critically acclaimed, in no doubt due to the band’s newly found sobriety. After years of drugs, sex, and debauchery, Dr. Feelgood was Mötley Crüe’s announcement that they could still rock even if they were sober.
Ironically, for an album that was recorded sober, the title track was about drugs. Dr. Feelgood was about a Los Angeles drug dealer. Nikki Sixx, who wrote the song, later told Rolling Stone that the song was based on several different drug dealers that he had done business with. Just two years before Dr. Feelgood became a hit, Sixx had been a notorious junkie who, after a heroin overdose, was actually legally dead for two minutes before a paramedic was able to revive him with two shots of adrenaline.
Along with being a slang term for heroin, Dr. Feelgood was also the nickname of several notorious doctors. Perhaps the most infamous Dr. Feelgood was Max Jacobson, who used to give “miracle tissue regenerator” shots to the rich and famous. His clients included everyone from JFK to Marilyn Monroe to Humphrey Bogart. Robert Freyman, the physician who is though to have inspired The Beatles’s Dr. Robert, was also sometimes called Dr. Feelgood.
Dr. Feelgood became Mötley Crüe’s first and, to date, only gold single in the United States. The video follows the song’s title character as he goes from working the streets to owning a mansion. In a repeat of what happened to Tony Montana, Dr. Feelgood’s own hubris eventually brings him down. As for why Mötley Crüe is performing in a revival tent, it probably just looked cool.
The song spent 109 weeks on the charts after its release and it remains Mötley Crüe’s most popular single.
Through the Shattered Lens 